Introduction
Starting in Berlin in 1994, Rammstein has been around for almost 30 years. With their first album Herzeleid released in September 1995, and their latest album Rammstein in May 2019, a lot has changed in the music industry since they first started. This raises the question whether their music has changed as well, and if so, how?
To answer this question, a corpus is used which consists of the seven studio albums from Rammstein (77 tracks);
- Herzeleid (1995)
- Sehnsucht (1997)
- Mutter (2001)
- Reise, Reise (2004)
- Rosenrot (2005)
- Liebe ist für alle da (2009)
- Rammstein (2019)
In addition to this two live albums were also included (27 tracks);
- Live aus Berlin (1999)
- Rammstein: Paris (2017)
The studio albums were included to see if their music changed over time and if so how? What changed? What did not change through all those years? Are there similarities between albums? The studio albums are added because it might also be interesting to look at differneces between live and studio albums.
The comparison points in this corpus are between the different studio albums, between the live albums and their corresponding studio tracks and between the live albums.
The corpus is quite representative as there are plenty of albums, and thus tracks, to compare. However, when looking at changes in albums over time, it has to be noted that 6 of the 7 studio albums were released in a 14 year time period (1995-2009), and in the last 12 years only one album has been released.
A few tracks that are atypical are Diamant (Rammstein, 2019), Roter Sand (Liebe ist für alle da, 2009), Los (Reise, Reise, 2004) and Ein Lied (Rosenrot, 2005). Diamant and Roter Sand have sound a lot more like ballads than the industrial metal we’re used from Rammstein. Los and Ein Lied both have a more slow, easy going tempo and have less distortion than other songs in the corpus.
Changes in Rammstein’s albums over time.
To see how the albums change over time, the valence, danceability and instrumentalness are plotted for each album. It is clear that the danceability decreases over time, and with that the valence and instrumentalness decrease as well.
The last album has the most variation in danceablity and valence. However, the instrumentalness stays quite the same for most tracks in the last album.
Changes in Rammsteins live performance. Comparing two live albums.
Rammstein released two live albums, Live aus Berlin (1999) and Rammstein: Paris (2017). The two live albums have seven tracks in common, which are listed below.
- Wollt ihr das Bett in Flammen sehen?
- Sehnsucht
- Asche zu Asche
- Du riechst so gut
- Du hast
- Bück dich
- Engel
Since there is a 18 year gab between the two albums it is to be expected that their performance, even of songs they play in both performances, has changed. To see what exactly changed the valence, energy, and liveness are plotted for both live albums and the corresponding studio tracks. Different versions of the tracks are connected with lines.
Looking at the plot, there is definitely some difference between the two live albums and between the live and studio tracks. One obvious difference is that the live tracks have a higher liveness than the studio track. The live album from Berlin seems to have a higher valence than the live album from Paris, which might be explained by the fact that the older albums also have a higher valence than the newer albums.
When comparing the live tracks to their corresponding studio track, almost all studio tracks have a higher valence. and more danceability. The track that changed the least between the live performances is Sehnsucht, listen for yourself!
Sehnsucht, Live aus Berlin
Sehnsucht, Rammstein: Paris
Sehnsucht, studio version
How did the tempo in the ablums change?
This graph shows the standard deviation and the mean of the tempo of the albums. What is interesting is the increase in the standard deviation of the tempo over time. The first two albums do not have much variance in tempo. After the second album the variance in tempo starts to increase, especially for the albums ROSENROT and LIEBE IST FÜR ALLE DA.
When looking at th mean tempo, not much changes over time, the only thing that stands out is the track WEIT WEG from the album RAMMSTEIN. According to spotify WEIT WEG has a mean tempo of 202 bpm, which is really high, especially since the track is not that fast in tempo.
Why does Spotify give WEIT WEG such a high tempo?
To get a better understanding of why Spotify gave Weit weg such a high mean tempo, the tempogram of the track is plotted. The left tempogram is the same tempogram as on the right but wrapped into a cyclic tempogram to see more details.
For the first twenty seconds a yellow line can be seen at around 160 bpm in both tempograms. After twenty seconds a yellow line can be seen on the left graph at around 150 bpm while at the right graph the yellow line is at around 250 bpm.
In the left graph a vague line can be seen at around 100 bpm which is closer to the actual tempo of the track. Spotify might pick up the somewhat fast drum in the background and based on that give this track such a high mean tempo. Especially since this rhythm is repeated multiple times through the track.
Can Rammsteins oeuvre be categorized in clusters?
Looking at the Dendogram, one small cluster on the right and a much bigger cluster on the left. The cluster on the right contains the tracks ROTER SAND, Diamant and EIN LIED. All these three tracks were also marked as atypical Rammstein tracks in the introduction. Looking at the Heatmap these tracks stand out because they are the only one with acousticness. They also seem to be the lowest on loudness.
Besides that it is difficult to see how the other clusters are formed since there are not much clusters that stand out in the Heatmap.
Why is Diamant so different from Rammsteins other songs?
Diamant
Du hast
Link 2 3 4
As mentioned before, Diamant is a very atypical song from Rammstein since it sound much more like a full on ballad than a heavy metal song. To see how this song differs from a more typical Rammstein song like Du hast or Links 2 3 4, the chroma-based and timbre-based self-similarity matrices for these songs are shown. What stands out is that Du hast and Links 2 3 4 have a much more clear structure and when listening to the songs the patterns are very recognizable. Diamant on the other hand has a much more complex structure and when listening to the song it is hard to recognize the patterns from the matrix.
When looking at the timbre based self-similarity matrices, Du hast and Links 2 3 4 have more dark blocks, meaning more homogeneity within the timeframes. Whereas Diamant has more vertical yellow lines, indicating more novelties. Besides that, Diamant also has a lot of diagonal lines in the chroma based matrix and only a vaguely visible checkerboard pattern, which indicates that a melodic phrase or passage is repeated in different parts of the song. It starts of with just guitar and voice and adds more and more strings as the song progresses. The other two tracks both start with an intro, but after that only have a few vertical lines, thus only a few novelties.
Chordogram
Comparison of an atypical track (Los) to a more typical track (Reise, Reise) from Rammstein, both from the album Reise Reise. Even though the songs are very different, some similarities can be found in their chordograms. Both show darker lines for the C:7, Eb:7 and Ab;7, and lighter lines around D:min and Bb:maj.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Rammsteins music definitely changed between their first and latest album. Danceability and valence both decrease over time. On the other hand, the varience in tempo gets higher over time. Their are some atypical tracks in their albums but there is not enough difference between tracks to make distinct clusters.